Jungtina Jamir
2:59 am the watch showed. I was still awake. I had received an e-mail from a friend, an atheist friend. Tears flooded my eyes as I read through it. This friend warned me that it would be the worst e-mail I ever read. What he didn’t expect was that it would be the best e-mail ever.
My mind traced back to a poem I read a few days ago. It said, fame is a lie, love is a pretence and pain is life’s reality. My faith reminded me that there is a life larger than pain. But really, have we grown orphans to life’s joy? Perhaps. Pain makes us realize that happiness must begin with us and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance. Not everyone loves, appreciates or approves of who or what you are... and that’s OK. I know; pains are real but so also is love. For me, listening to someone is love, sharing a laugh with a friend is love, a smile is love, typing a letter for grandpa is love, making the layout for tomorrow’s edition for you to read is love, washing the car for dad is love, hugging the person next to you is love…………Surely then, even an atheist would believe in love. Would you not?
I don’t know anything. Really. But writing helps my reasons find a source of redemption. Maybe that’s why I write. Helping myself!
What my atheist friend wrote to me was something that reminded me of life being too short. Clichéd, but true. I know that I’ll be leaving one day. Leaving this world. We all will! Where we go from there is purely what we believe in. There is so much mess in our lives that sometimes we break down, feel out of place, feel misunderstood with no one to hear us, be hurt, be lost, be left out and with nothing feeling alright. And in the midst of all our fears, our insanity stops dead in our tracks and somewhere the voice inside our head cries out – enough! I don’t know what it’s like to be you. You don’t know what it’s like to be me. But perhaps more of care, love and hope will lessen our pain, our fears. Maybe you’ll say you don’t care, but do you not really? You may not know it, but someone finds reasons to feel glad about life because of you. I’ll leave tomorrow, how much have I done today?
There is another thing I didn’t really understand until now. That in life the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected. And for me, the unexpected e-mail from an atheist friend made me value more of care, dreams and friendship.
Dear atheist friend,
Some of us grow up way too fast and there are moments in life we just can’t ignore. For some people the moments passed by, but we still can’t turn away because all the dreams we never thought we’d lose gets tossed along the way. It sometimes frustrates me to know that life is more than who I am and that everyday re-runs become my history. But I am reminded of how short life is and that wasting it to frustrations can only lead to misery.
You wrote that it’s been a couple of years since you cried last. Well, I might as well tell you that I cry much more often than you. Let’s see, I fell down the stairs last week and I cried, my aunt lost her dog and I cried, my brother left for his studies and I cried, …..but most of all, I received an e-mail from you and I cried. Not that it hurt, but the kinda tears that fill the eyes when you feel happy and warm, when you feel worthwhile.
You wrote to tell me in the end that if you believed in God I would’ve been His greatest gift to you.
This is for you, my friend and my brother. As for me, I believe in God and you are His greatest gift to me.
